Future Commerce ~ Fall 2018 H2 Seminar...

This Tuesday 10/30/2018 from 1-2:30pm is the introductory kickoff class session of our half-semester 6-unit Future Commerce seminar in the MIT Media Lab room E14-244. Please spread the word! Listeners & cross-registrants welcome.  We explore emerging technologies that will transform financial services.  Our top thematic areas include:

• Money ~ Blockchain-based digital currencies; novel barter platforms; peer-to-peer technologies; 
• Markets ~ Wisdom of crowds & prediction markets; fraud meets flash crashes; network-enabled markets; Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs);
• Transactions & Marketplaces ~ Marketplace stack of identity, reputation, marketplace, money; the foundation of assets over IP; how blockchain, mobile platforms and digital currencies give inclusive access;
• Infrastructure ~ Identity, Security & Privacy challenges; cybersecurity; anti-money laundering (AML) and Know Your Client (KYC) rules;
• AI & Emerging Technologies ~ Understanding the impacts of artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies on financial services.

Scheduled guest speakers include Yaniv Altshuler, CEO Endor; Snejina Zacharia, CEO Insurify; Jeremy Allaire, CEO Circle; Meltem Demirors, CSO CoinShares; Prof. Alex Pentland, Connection Science & Human Dynamics; Clara Durodié, Chair, Cognitive Finance Group; Will Graylin, CEO OVLoop; Amias Gerety, Partner, QED / fmr U.S. Treasury Dept.

Pearl Supercity ~ River Delta Conurbation!

The recent opening of world's longest (55km) sea-crossing bridge between Hong Kong + Macao + Zhuhai completes the southern connection linking a half-dozen Chinese megacities into a ~70M+ inhabitant supercity as Visual Capitalist shows...

Moral Machines ~ Discovering Ethical Views...

Nature published The Moral Machine experiment results...

"Before we allow our cars to make ethical decisions, we need to have a global conversation to express our preferences to the companies that will design moral algorithms, and to the policymakers that will regulate them. The Moral Machine was deployed to initiate such a conversation, and millions of people weighed in from around the world. [...] an online experimental platform designed to explore the moral dilemmas faced by autonomous vehicles. This platform gathered 40 million decisions in ten languages from millions of people in 233 countries and terri tories. [...] Geolocation allowed us to identify the country of residence of Moral Machine respondents, and to seek clusters of countries with homogeneous vectors of moral preferences."

Here's the summary visualization of results...

Moral Matrix ~ Libs vs Cons Outlook Differences...

Jon Miltimore in FEE writes about social psychologist Jonathan Haidt's attempts to understand and explain human morality and, in particular...

"...the five primary categories that serve as our moral foundation:

1. Care/harm ~ an ability to feel (and dislike) the pain of others; underlies virtues of kindness, gentleness, and nurturance. 
2. Fairness/reciprocity ~ the evolutionary process of reciprocal altruism; generates ideas of justice, rights, and autonomy. 
3. Loyalty/betrayal ~ ability to form shifting coalitions; underlies virtues of patriotism and self-sacrifice for the group.
4. Authority/subversion ~ hierarchical social interactions; underlies virtues of leadership and followership, legitimate authority and traditions. 
5. Sanctity/degradation ~ psychology of disgust and contamination; underlies religious notions of striving to live in an elevated, less carnal, more noble way."

"What Haidt found is that both conservatives and liberals recognize the Harm/Care and Fairness/Reciprocity values. Liberal-minded people, however, tend to reject the three remaining foundational values -- Loyalty/betrayal, Authority/subversion, and Sanctity/degradation -- while conservatives accept them. It’s an extraordinary difference, and it helps explain why many liberals and conservatives in America think “the other side” is bonkers."

World Economy 2017 ~ Visualizing Global GDP...

WEF spotlights Visual Capitalist infographic visualizing global GDP...

Human Capital Index ~ Developing Youth...

BBC Africa's Farouk Chothia reports on the World Bank's Human Capital Index...

"...a new way of measuring economic success and gauges how much effort is being put into developing the youth. The higher the investment in education and health the more productive and higher earning the workforce tends to be, the World Bank says. African countries dominate the bottom of the index."

Music, Media, Money ~ Waves of Discovation...

Visual Capitalist shares Music Revenue infographics...

Corruption Perceptions Index ~ Econographic!

The Economist Daily Chart reminds us of Corruption...

"At least 6bn people around the world live in corrupt countries, according to Transparency International’s (TI) latest ranking of perceptions of corruption in the public sector."